POLLEN SOUP

PIERRE PROSKE

2006-2007

This project is essentially a non-linear, never-ending computer animation of pollen and other microscopic fossils made from a collage of images obtained through high resolution digital microscopy. Through photographs taken using various camera-equipped high resolution microscopes from a laboratory in the Department of Archaeology and Natural History at the Australian National University in 2006, I created the visual source material for several pieces of software that I wrote, of which Pollen Soup is one. These images used were taken from both archival slides and recent material collected by palynologists and palaeoecologists from such regions as the Galapagos islands, south east Asia, and northern Australia. Photographs of the slides were edited to isolate particular micro-organisms or fossils, many of which consisted of pollen, diatoms, testate amoebae and other small specimens. Generative processes seem to be particularly good at creating morphologies and narratives from large quantities of data and this proved to be a useful tool to navigate the data-sets I collected while working in the laboratory. This real-time animation is written in the Processing (Java) environment

Pierre Proske is an Australian electronic artist intrigued by the pervasiveness of technology in culture and its relationship to nature. After years of juggling parallel interests in technology and the arts, Pierre tired of the schizophrenia and finally discovered that it was socially acceptable, in fact highly desirable, to merge the two. Consequently he has taken on the ambitious task of rendering computers accountable to our sometimes misplaced but inevitable humanity. Proske's work involves exposing the unspoken relationships we have with technology and harnessing machines into exploring new aesthetics. He has exhibited or performed in Australia, Sweden., Brazil, Japan and the Netherlands.

SHAREDSCAPES - POINTS OF VIEW ON LANDSCAPES

GRÉGOIRE ZABÉ

2008

SHAREDSCAPES is an experimental 3d shared space, a platform for creatvity, research and self-expression. It welcomes online submissions of texts, pictures and sounds, which will express your definitions of the concept of landscape. Through the medium of the technological translation of material published online, its secondary aim is to create a 3D space/sculpture in real time. Each deformation of the 3d space surface is specific, linked to the characteristics of the published informations (date, weight, content...).This will crystalise that material, seeking to bring together computer-generated images, chaotic/generative modelling and a “virtual reality” space. Little by little, a virtual landscape will develop. Its composition will not be subject to the physical constraints of a site (in concrete geographical terms) but to the technological exchanges of human beings virtually connected to each other. It is in the ambiguous relationship between landscape and information that the essence of this project exists.

Grégoire Zabé is a new media artist, teacher at Ecole Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Strasbourg, France. His main interests are in collaborative cyberspaces, evolutive representation systems, internet as a dimentional and social space, individuals plunged into new media context. « Moving, instable, multiple, cross-disciplinary bodies and objects are an important source of inspiration for my work. Their meeting, juxtaposition, merging or mutation breed a dynamic setting in motion and legitimate their existence on the computer/Internet medium. Web3d induces a deep modification of our representation systems, and defines a new unfinished streaming time and place for free arts, and active audience » exhibitions: Norapolis multimedia festival metz 2002, Laval Virtual 2002, web3Dart selection 2003, acm siggraph web3d symposium 2003, lab3d at Cornerhouse Manchester, ICA London, Folly Gallery Lancaster, Experimental Art Foundation Adelaide, Center of Contemporary Art Skopje, FILE festival sao paulo 2003, EMPYRE international mailing list june 2003, Atelier Alternatif Strasbourg 2003, Norapolis multimedia Festival 2004, web3Dart selection 2005, Exhibition Unauthorized Access at Hermitage Museum, St Petersbourg 2005, Nuit Blanche Strasbourg 2006, Web3dart 2006, Musée d'art Moderne et Contemporain de Strasbourg 2007...

CITYSCAPES

MYRON TURNER

2007-2008

Cityscapes provides a common meeting place where people can share their experiences of the places where they live and have lived, or visited, even of places they've imagined, read about, hope or have hoped to visit. Cityscapes is not only the reflection of a physical community but of a shared imaginative space. Cityscapes was developed in an aesthetic context, as a project in “psychogeography” and locative media, where the locative technologies are camera and descriptive text and the pyschogeography consists of the spaces we inhabit as a global community. It is a browser-based application that embeds mapping software and geographical locating services in a wiki framework, which enables multiple users to contribute texts and images to a common project.

Myron Turner is a Canadian multi-media artist and printmaker, whose work has been exhibited throughout Canada, and in the U.S., U.K., and Brazil. He began working with computers in 1990 and with the Internet in 1994. He has held several residencies at the new media center of the Banff Centre for the Arts, and has exhibited in the Artport series of the Whitney Museum of American Art. He was nominated for a Viper International Award (2006). His works are in the Rhizome Artbase collection and in the collection of the JavaMuseum. His web sites are www.room535.org (art) and www.mturner.org (open source software).

PASSIVITATE IMUNITASS (ACTIVISTA)

PODERIU

2008

Passivitate Imunitass (Activista) is an ongoing project in which graphic posters related to specific thematics are developed under a continuous process; their themes cover economics, politics, war, environment, culture, etc. In addition, each new poster is distributed free once week through e-mail; to receive posters, e-mail to poderiu79@gmail.com with subject "send me posters".   

Poderiu is a political, environmental and cultural activist. Also researcher in the areas of art and culture sociology.

88 CONSTELLATIONS FOR WITTGENSTEIN (TO BE PLAYED WITH THE LEFT HAND)

DAVID CLARK

2008

Lyrical and philosophical, this sprawling feature-length interactive film for the internet contemplates the life and work of the influential Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein through 88 interactive Flash animations, each one corresponding to a constellation from the night sky. The viewer is invited to navigate through a web of interconnecting narratives that move from association to association - bringing Wittgenstein's work into conversation with our contemporary digital culture. The work is an interactive collage. It is story of a man's life told in fragments. It is a map of coincidence and correspondences. It is a digital film. It is story-telling as browsing.

David Clark is known for his website 'A is for Apple' that has been shown at over 50 film festivals around the world including Sundance, SIGGRAPH, Transmediale in Berlin and the American Museum of the Moving Image. 'A is for Apple' won 'Best in Show' at the 2003 SXSW Interactive Festival in Austen, Texas and First Prize at FILE2002 in Sao Paulo, Brazil. He is a member of the new media collective 'computer.says.no'. He studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Whitney Program in New York, and the Canadian Film Centre in Toronto. He currently teaches film and media arts at NSCAD University in Halifax. His personal website is www.chemicalpictures.net.